Tag Archives: Welsh writers

Dylan Thomas is associated with Laugharne Castle who leased the nearby Castle House during the 1930s and 1940s. The quotes this week were from a selection of Welsh writers and poets.

“Don’t worry about the bits that you can’t understand. Sit back and let the words wash around like music.” Quote can be found in a sequel to a very famous children’s book – Roald Dahl is of Scandinavian descent but was baptised in Cardiff in 1916. He served in the RAF during the war before becoming a writer. He had links with Derbyshire – attending Repton School in his youth.

“The function of posterity is to look after itself.” The hard drinking Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.

“Woe be to him who reads but one book,” George Herbert the seventeenth century poet associated with metaphysical poetry wrote this very sensible line.

“Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages? … I guess it’s because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears – Chaucer’s, Boccaccio’s, Henry Knighton’s, Thomas Walsingham’s. Froissart’s, Jean Creton’s… writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves.” Historian and actor who informed the Romans that Brian was not the Messiah – just a very naughty boy…Terry Jones was born in Colwyn Bay.

“I do love the past but wouldn’t want to live in it.” The best selling novelist of Tipping the Velvet and The Fingersmith fame.

“Men are born ignorant not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” Bertrand Russell the Nobel prize winner of 1950 was a man of many talents.

“It’s people with obsessions who do the real harm in the world.” Dick Francis is associated with crime and horses. He was born in Pembrokeshire.

“When all’s said, and done, if civilisation drowns the last colour to go will be gold -the light on a glass, the prow of a gondola, the name on a rosewood piano as silence engulfs it.” Gillian Clarke is writing about the Titanic in these lines.

“The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the twentieth century.” This Welsh born novelist created Kingsbridge and built a cathedral of words – I keep taking us back to Ken Follett!

A girl from the Welsh Marches who wrote under two names wrote the Brothers of Gwynedd but wrote this line in a book about a battle of 1403: “He sat staring before him, seeing nothing but a long line of Mortimers, inexhaustable and prolific to the end of time.” Edith Pargeter, also known as Ellis Peters, wrote this line in her book about the Battle of Shrewsbury. The book is called A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury.